Yesterday I went for a stroll with a friend and my two sisters. The friend being a first year in college and my sisters of the same age ,made me the eldest amongst the four. While walking back to the house we met a strange old man .Or rather he met us that made us all jumpy at the prospect of compulsion to talk to him out of sheer 'ijjat' .
There was a feeling of solitude and longing as we got around him .This brought my anxiety and social intimacy issues to the surface quicker than i would have thought.
The old man as i was saying seemed too old.As old as a man can get ,that you wonder he cannot get older any further and the ticking clock of age has met its end.
He started.
Do you know me ?, with a confidence and a strength in voice that made you wonder we knew each other from a long time.Naturally we said no in unison. Where do you live ?.I told him about the location of my house. I told my grandfather's name and similarly my friend and my sisters(cousins) told theirs. He to my astonishment and others told me the names of my grandfather and my great grandfather's. He got into his mode of remembering the old times by telling the history and geography of all our families (their business , sons/daughters etc.).
I was not amused,neither was i shocked ,since everybody of that age know my great grandfather's name since he was a well known man. The point behind all this talk as i later understood was ,this old man had nothing else to think or talk about.
As he told us later; His son had attained a good level of education and gradually drifted away from the parents due to family and work responsibilities . The demands of the job and the son's family had kept him aloof or ignorant about his parents old age needs. He had provided ( as i am judging as a possibility) for the upkeep of the parents but not in a way that dhows devotion or in this case fulfilled the expectations of the parent.
This was nothing new to me and neither of us felt the shock. My friend and my sisters have grown up and seen and read enough of this to take it in an absorbing way. The shocker for me came came when he favored his daughter who was married somewhere ,and had as a matter of fact helped him in days when the son was absent. I was disgusted by the old man now.
The daughter gets married and go away .The son is supposed to take care of parents' in old age. The son fails to complete his responsibility in taking care of parents in some way or the other. The daughter comes and covers that tiny void and emerges a winner making the son the black sheep or a villain. This was my analysis of the total old man talk and what he was conveying.
Let us consider another scenario : The daughter does not get married and stays with the family . It turns out that she is incapable or ignorant in the same way /manner as her brother. ie. She can only cover up the small voids left by the son and not the rest.This is what she is best at . Now the father would call her a villain? .... The comparison done by the father between son and daughter and their jobs and the roles performed by them in the father's life are entirely different . We know this because the son and daughter are headed on different roads.If the daughter is proving to be too good ,then eliminate the son and his roles and let's see how good a daughter is on herself.
I would like to clarify i am not supporting the ignorance of the son but only justifying the invalid and preposterous complaint regime that the parent had started.
Wrong or Right ,I don't know.But your comments would be a great help as this is asocial issue with no solutions.
At the end the four of us never talked about it. Making fun was an option ,we chose not to. As we might face a situation similar to it. We walked away after the talk but never talked.
